The Absolute

Winner....
Premio Municipal de la Novela 2021
Premio Nacional de Literatura Argentina 2018
Premio Literario de la Academia Argentina de Letras 2017
Best Novel Award by La Nación 2016

A provocative multigenerational exploration of creative genius, madness, and family relationships. With the ambition and density of style of Vladimir Nabokov or Olga Tokarczuk, this is a story both profound and handled with a light touch.

The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters' lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator's ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang.

The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words.

"This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. … It's the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is." -La Nación

About the author

Daniel Guebel

Summary

Winner....
Premio Municipal de la Novela 2021
Premio Nacional de Literatura Argentina 2018
Premio Literario de la Academia Argentina de Letras 2017
Best Novel Award by La Nación 2016
 
A provocative multigenerational exploration of creative genius, madness, and family relationships. With the ambition and density of style of Vladimir Nabokov or Olga Tokarczuk, this is a story both profound and handled with a light touch.

The Absolute is a sprawling historical novel about the Deliuskin-Scriabin family, made up of six generations of geniuses and madmen. Beginning in the mid-18th century in Russia, across Europe and ending in late 20th-century Argentina, the characters’ lives play out in different branches of art, politics and science in such radical ways that they transform the world and its reality. The narrator’s ancestor, Frantisek Deliuskin, invents a new form of music in the 18th century; his son, Andrei Deliuskin, makes some marginal annotations to the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that are later interpreted by Lenin as an instruction manual to carry out the Russian Revolution of 1917; Esau Deliuskin, following the course of his father, creates a socialist utopian society; and down through the generations to the narrator, whose creation takes him back in time and space to the moment of the Big Bang.
 
The Absolute is a monumental work about the creation of art and about family, about spiritual traditions and about throwing oneself into the world not to capture life but to create it, in and through words.
 
“This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. … It’s the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is.” —La Nación

 

Additional text

“There is a Guebelian style, and it's so rare for a writer to have a style (it's so rare for someone who writes to be a real writer) that one just has to accept it."
—César Aira

“Guebel is a genius. He is the best novelist of his generation, my generation. The most solid of our great authors.”
—Luis Chitarroni

“His writing is a tour de force. This is a masterpiece at a time when masterpieces seem impossible and at the same time challenges the very idea of a masterpiece. This is the only novel I would have wanted to write. It’s the novel one should read if they want to know what an artist is.”
—Pablo Gianera, La Nación

“Guebel writes from that crystal frontier where creativity meets madness, where imagination meets delirium. His cast of eccentrics often reminds us of Borges’ characters, but of a Borges gone wild.”
—Carlos Fonseca, author of Natural History


"The Absolute is an extraordinary novel, an exploration of memory and music, of social history, science and family ties. Guebel's remote ancestor is Richard Burton and his Anatomy of Melancholy; his contemporaries, Norman Manea and W.G. Sebald."
—Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading

Product details

• Authors: Daniel Guebel, Jessica Sequeira
• Assisted by: Jessica Sequeira (Translation)
• Publisher: Seven stories press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 17.05.2022
• EAN: 9781644211601
• ISBN: 978-1-64421-160-1
• No. of pages: 464
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 210 mm x 24 mm
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature